by Alissa C. Atkins, Esq.

Last month, OSHA issued a final electronic record-keeping rule, which will become effective on Jan. 1, 2017. The rule applies to employers with 250 or more employees and with as few as 20 employees in “high-risk industries,” including construction, manufacturing, stores, freight trucking and hospitals. The rule requires that data regarding injuries be sent automatically to OSHA, which may then be made publicly available on OSHA’s website. Although effective in January, the rule mandates that reporting for covered employers must be done by July 1, 2017 for all reportable 2016 claims, with tapering deadlines over the next two years. By 2019, reportable injury data for the prior year must be electronically submitted to OSHA by March 2 of each year.

A quote on OSHA’s website explains the reasoning behind the new rule:

“Our new rule will ‘nudge’ employers to prevent work injuries to show investors, job seekers, customers and the public they operate safe and well-managed facilities. Access to injury data will also help OSHA better target compliance assistance and enforcement resources, and enable ‘big data’ researchers to apply their skills to making workplaces safer.”

Dr. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health

This has created concern among employers who will be required to report data under this rule, many of whom argue that collecting aggregate injury data is one thing, but making specific employer injury information available to the public will cause problems for their businesses. Previously, the data collected was required to be reported but not electronically submitted to OSHA, such that specific claim information was only available to a small group of people. OSHA’s intent in publishing the data is to force employers to drive down reportable claims, ideally improving safety in the process. Interestingly, it may have the opposite result. Using the same thought process OSHA applied when issuing the new drug testing recommendations in the below story, unions and employers contend that this new rule may discourage employers from reporting injuries so as not to face the backlash from a publicly recordable event.